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2013 was the year of ultraviolent TV shows

By Willa Paskin, Slate

Updated:
12/27/2013 11:23:29 AM EST

Actors Shawn Ashmore, Jeannane Goossen, Kevin Bacon, James Purefoy, Natalie Zea and Kyle Cattlet on the new drama THE FOLLOWING (Getty Images)

I want to talk about what I hated most this year: ultraviolence. By a huge margin, my most visceral viewing experience came when I watched the first three episodes of Fox's “The Following,” a show that was one of the few breakout hits of last season. ”The Following” stars Kevin Bacon as a tortured ex-FBI agent tracking a genius serial killer who oversees a far-flung cult of devoted, homicidal maniacs dedicated to the teachings of Edgar Allan Poe. The show is a grisly network retort to cable that is almost as inane as it is gory, featuring both graphic puppy slaughter and specious speeches about the phony imperative to murder embedded in Poe's short stories. It basically turned me into Tipper Gore: I didn't just dislike it, it offended me.

I don't believe that watching violence makes people violent. I don't believe in dragging TV executives down to Congress and asking them what they think they are doing to the youth of America. But I do believe that fictions matter, that stories are powerful and meaningful and that they do something to us: If they can do good, why can't they do bad? When I watched “The Following” — saw a naked woman stick an ice pick in her own brain and a masked man light a stranger on fire in the middle of the street — I was outraged, I was woozy.

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I wanted to ask the people who make this show, “So you sit around in the writer's room dreaming up horrible things that have not yet happened and unleash them into the world? Do you high-five the person who comes up with the vilest murder?” I am genuinely embarrassed by this reaction; it's so wholly unsophisticated, so moralistic, it gives way too much power and credit to a piece of schlock. But it's how I felt.

If I had been watching “The Following” on another day, I might not have had that reaction. Maybe I would have just shrugged and shook my head, as when watching “Low Winter Sun” or “Mob City” or “Ray Donovan,” at the played-out tiredness of it all. But “The Following” has had a lasting effect: It's as if it made me permanently full. I can no longer stomach violence of this sort; I see it and I start to feel a little sick. And I don't mean just any violence, I mean violence as proof of seriousness and ambition — shows that equate body counts with artistic merit and so keep the corpses coming.

There are very violent shows I like: “Scandal,” “Game of Thrones,” “Top of the Lake,” “American Horror Story,” “Justified” and procedurals like “Bones” and “Castle” can all be grisly. But these shows take care with their violence or use it purposefully. “Scandal” and “American Horror Story” keep the gore at a certain distance from the audience by making it broad, campy, over the top. Procedurals defuse violence by encouraging audiences to forget they are even looking at dead corpses, turning bodies into funny and salacious props, which is icky in a different (but to me more palatable) way. And shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Top of the Lake” use violence as horrible punctuation: They know as well as anyone watching how awful and powerful it can be.

And this brings me to “Hannibal,” which is by far the best-made of this year's ultraviolent shows. It's a gorgeous, thoughtful, well-acted show; yet it is so reverent of murder, of the art or murder, that something in me shuts down. I don't care how beautifully filmed the carcasses are — how perfectly a body is draped over antlers — it just feels like violence as “quality,” this time with great production values.

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